Banksy banana mastermind?

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Self-Censorship and Staying alive in the Mexican Media

“Jose Luis Ortega Mata was a brave
publisher of Semanario, a weekly newsmagazine [sic] in the
Mexico-U.S. border town of Ojinaga, Chihuaua. He denounced drug
trafficking in that northern region of Mexico and the relationship
between drug lords with local police, politicians and businessmen.
Early in 2001, he was about to publish a new report on how drug money
was being used to finance political campaigns when a gunman shot him
twice in the head, killing him on his way to the office.”

Raymundo Riva-Palacio, a Nieman Fellow,
former managing editor of El Universal, and current columnist for
ejeCentral.com.mx – a Mexican news site, knows firsthand the
dangers of covering Mexican drug cartels.

As Riva-Palacio notes, Mexican media
organizations face a unique challenge – how to cover corruption,
drug violence and trafficking effectively while evading the threat of
direct retaliation from the cartels themselves. The threat of
violence against the media often leads to self-censorship – a
dangerous proposition for a democratic country whose government is
mired in corruption and heavily influenced by criminal organizations.

“[T]he
case of young reporter Alfredo Jiminez, from el Imparcial in
Hermosillo, who disappeared in April 2005 on his way to meet a
federal police source. Jiminez was a notorious investigative reporter
who had several scoops on the whereabouts of a number of members of
one drug cartel in the region. Federal authorities investigating the
crime didn't know that Jimenez was fed information from a rival
cartel to damages its enemy and, when the “enemy” found out the
original source of information; they are presumed
to have
murdered him.”

Riva-Palacio
explained that the pressure exerted on the media by cartels has
caused media organizations to rethink how to cover the issues.

“This
year [2006] some Mexican news organizations decided to confront this
challenge by working together. Their model is based on the U.S.
Experience of the Arizona Project, created by independent journalists
to continue the work of investigative reporter Don Bolles, who was
assassinated while researching mob activities in Arizona. The Mexican
newspapers agreed to investigate collectively the whereabouts of EL
Imparcial reporter Jimenez and publish every step in their
investigation on the same day, without a byline, to protect the
reporters involved in the project.”

“In face of a general state of
insecurity, executions, threats of kidnapping and extortion, the
outlook is a devastating situation for Mexican society. In such
context, the profession of journalism is especially critical for the
social role it carries as an intermediary between events of public
interest and citizens.”

Now, more than ever, the Mexican media must regroup and rethink how to cover the important and dangerous topic of drug cartels. Its coverage, while risky for the reporters and media, is possibly the only check on a system that is spinning out of control.